The good people at Jameson have put together a nice little piece of branded content showing how to experience their whiskey. From Pouring to Sipping: A Guide to Whiskey Tasting is an excellent primer featuring this accurate description of how people experience aroma:

Often, recreational whiskey tasters describe the nose in terms of a memory or a metaphor: the hayloft in a barn, for example, or a summer night by a campfire…Part of the joy of participating in a whiskey tasting is finding creative new ways to describe what you’re experiencing, so it’s okay to let your inner creative writing major run wild.

While aroma is certainly evocative, and we all have those amazing moments when a combination of scents wafting out of a glass makes vivid a long-lost memory, poetics is not what we do.

There’s a reason why we use paper strips to deliver our aromatic essences to your nose. Sure, you could smell right out of the bottle, but doing that you’d miss most of the smelling experience.

The “perfumer strips” included in our training kits are made of a special paper allows the aroma to evolve over time, as would a spirit poured neat into a glass. Dip one in an aroma sample, wave it gently for 15 seconds so the alcohol evaporates, and then give it whiff.

The first impression of any spirit is the fast-evaporating volatile liquids that form the aromatic “top notes” of a drink. They’re light, fruity, and fleeting. They dissipate in minutes, leaving behind the subtle, nuanced “mid note” spicy and dense florals. Finally, what’s left is the “base notes” that are the most familiar face of the spirit you’re nosing. Vanilla for Bourbon; peat smoke for an Islay whisky; juniper for gin.

We carefully source our perfumery strips and advocate their use even though they can be kind of a pain. (At the end of training, there are usually hundreds around to dispose of.) But they’re an absolute necessity when it comes to really understanding aromas and how they fit together to make a fine drink.

Over the weekend, we took the new bourbon kit out for a test drive. We ran 12 whiskey drinkers of various ages (median: 29) through the two-hour Introduction to Bourbon training. The result varied from what you’d expect (“More bourbon samples!!!”) to the encouraging (of 11 people who have visited a distillery, 10 would recommend the bourbon training to friends) to the odd (why do half the bourbon drinkers in the group list martinis as their drink of choice when they’re feeling “fancy”?).

The session was a lot of fun, and we’re tearing into the presentation to give it stronger internal logic and make a more solid connection between specific aromas and specific bourbons. We’re going to get the whole thing really nice and tight before we launch in December.

Oh, and for the first few sessions, we’re going to cut our rates a lot, so if you have a holiday party you have to plan…

“Consumers are searching for meaningful luxury – in particular younger consumers are diving deeper into provenance and history, caring more about the roots of the brands they consume. They want to understand not only how a product is made, but where it’s made and what its intrinsic values are.”

Today, aged rum is gaining popularity as an alternative brown spirit. You heard it here…well, not first, exactly, but pretty early: sipping aged rums is going to be a major thing very soon.

Rum is enjoying the same craft distilling Renaissance that has revolutionized gin and revived mezcal. But more than that, the normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba is going to open the United States to exotic (and highly marketable) rum brands previously unavailable. And if you think Cuban rum, in keeping with communism’s tendency to cut corners, is going to be industrial-grade swill, think again. Havana Club’s Maximo Extra Anejo currently sells for upwards of $1,500 a bottle, not including the cost of smuggling it into the U.S.

The quality and complexity of modern wine and spirits demands drinks professionals who understand their craft better than any in history. Whether selling, buying or creating something new, the subtleties of the experience of drinking are best learned methodically.

The Aroma Academy is a proven method for learning how to recognize and articulate the most important aspects of drinks — the aromas. Whether in one of our professional classes or using one of our self-training kits, you’ll learn how to identify the basic aromas that combine to form the elegant complexity of fine spirits and wine.

Thousands of drinks professionals worldwide have improved their appreciation and understanding with Aroma Academy’s carefully crafted training. If you’re serious about your career — or just about the enjoyment and appreciation of today’s distinct spirits and wines — Aroma Academy will change how you think about “tasting”.